The letters pages in Peace News have long been a forum for debate on pacifist ideas: the August 1955 issues were no exception. Sid Parker, individualist anarchist, contributed to and edited political publications over many decades; pacifist Denis Barritt lived in Northern Ireland - including during “the troubles” - opposing all armies, ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’.
Anarchist position
There is one paragraph [of a Peace Pledge Union document in a previous PN] with which…
It will be hard for young readers of PN to comprehend what living under the threat of aptly-named MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – was like, but believe me when I write that I didn’t expect to live to see my 21st birthday.
In 1961 (I think that was the year), the Labour Party conference voted in favour of CND’s policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament and on the strength of this commitment alone, I joined the Co-op Party which was affiliated – and still is as far as I…
I’m suffering from end-of-termitis. Which is normal for July. Everyone in the family is tired and grumpy; everything feels a little too much. I thought I’d escaped it at the beginning of May when I still had my post-marathon bounce, but as the weeks have progressed exhaustion has been creeping up on me.
This year, it’s not just the usual juggle of work and family that’s tiring me. Part of my weariness stems from feeling a bit overwhelmed by the state of the world, thanks to May’s…
What a lovely project! My head today is not responding. I’m about to talk to an estate agent about putting in an offer for our co-op to buy some land. My head space is definitely elsewhere! That quote [from the front of PN] is amazing. I’m a bit shy about things like this. If it was writing in an email....
- Woman
I’m not a vigorous activist, though I’ve been on a few marches. Except in the world of education, where I hope it has been…
How can we create a genuinely common agenda for the climate movement and the disarmament movement? It’s easy – and still important – to say that the money we spend on nuclear weapons could be spent on preventing climate change, but there must be more than that.
For us in the peace movement, it can be hard sometimes to see that climate change is already a reality today, it’s not just about what might happen two generations from now. We’re already seeing the impact of climate change…
I woke up this morning to nine people being killed: Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Reverend DePayne Middleton-Doctor, the honorable reverend Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, reverend Daniel Simmons Sr, reverend Sharonda Singleton, and Myra Thompson.
I am dragged down and hurt, and I can barely feel the full pain that reading those names…
Marking the 30th anniversary of Côr Cochion Caerdydd
(Cardiff Reds Choir) in 2013.
Ray Davies, the indefatigable peace activist, socialist, local representative of his people in Bedwas, Trethomas and Machen, and lover of male voice choirs, died age 85 on 7 May, election day. He would have lamented the result.
Ray bore his pancreatic cancer with the same courage he had when he faced the dangers underground as a boy miner, the police on picket lines during the Miners’…
Lib at the Brawdy blockade, 1982.
Elisabeth (Lib) Rowlands-Hughes of Llangollen, who died aged 96 in November 2014, was remembered by friends, including representatives of peace groups from Wales and beyond, at a celebration of her life held in April.
Born at the end of the First World War into a family that included influential preachers and pacifists, Lib recalled spending time with her older cousins, the Davies sisters of Gregynog, and conscientious objector George M Ll…
As the Second World War’s killing ended – in the European theatre at least – news emerged from recently-liberated concentration camps and extermination camps. Much of this PN report was based on a visit to Buchenwald a few weeks earlier by a London-based Swedish journalist.
The details of the treatment of German conscientious objectors which we print below give the first detailed factual reply to the oft-repeated war-time question – ‘What would happen to any conscientious objectors in…
What keeps coming into my mind is ‘Red Ken, Red Ken’, but I’m not having him in here. He’s not allowed.
That chair is red. That top is red. Ketchup is red! There’s a lot of red things in the world.
I don’t know if I can talk about this for three minutes....
Okay, well, the obvious thing is, I guess: ‘Communism!’
For me, red is anger. Which can be destructive, but can also be a positive force, a driving force.
I guess what it’s making me think about is: the…
The last few weeks have all been about significant anniversaries. Several have been personal: Chris and I have been remembering our wedding (18 years), our fathers (25 years since his Dad died, 20 years since mine) and my mother (who died a year ago). Two have been political: 100 years since the beginning of the Armenian genocide, 70 since VE Day. All of which has got me thinking about such occasions, why they matter, and how they are best marked.
Anniversaries matter because they…
Just after I sent a note to an email list about ‘class’, occasioned by friendly comments I had from a couple of conservatives about a cartoon I’d sent, I thought of an excellent example of the ‘class attitudes’ of those in the working class, which I should have mentioned.
Again, it isn’t a matter of virtue, right and wrong, etc, but simply a difference in class attitudes.
The year was probably 1951, the place was Ocean Park, California, and I was a student at UCLA.…
It’s a curious journey to become a pacifist. I wonder if other pacifists who read Peace News – PN readers are not necessarily pacifists, incidentally – are like me, in that they ponder the whys and wherefores of their own journeys. If you’re born into a Quaker family or your parents are otherwise pacifists, then the journey may have a certain inevitability but how, otherwise, does pacifism take hold?
I’ve found as I’ve become older my pacifism has become more…
Peace News faced difficulties – both practical and political – whilst trying to continue as a pacifist publication during the Second World War. Although there have been threats to the existence of the paper occasionally since then, such problems have never been as frequent as during that era:
Messrs WH Smith & Sons distribute 10,250 copies of Peace News every week and other wholesalers, between them, 12,200.
Sir Arnold Wilson [a well-known…
A couple of years ago I wrote a laudatory column here about my friend Bill Fay and his first commissioned album for 41 years. Life is People (Dead Oceans) received a five star review in The Independent as well as rave reviews elsewhere and deserved every word of praise it received.
I met Bill in 1970 and listened with admiration and wonder to his first LP, Bill Fay, which had just been released. His songs were both rooted in the natural world and committed…
Godric Bader with the Gandhi Foundation
peace prize Photo: Gandhi Foundation
The international peace prize of the Gandhi Foundation for 2014 was awarded jointly to Godric Bader, the last surviving founder, former managing director and chair of the Scott Bader Company Ltd, and to the Scott Bader Commonwealth, a charitable trust which holds the company assets.
The firm, founded by Godric’s father in 1921, was a private company until the family gave the shares to the…
This morning I woke to the news that Benjamin Netanyahu has won Israel’s general election. My heart sank, because, with such a military hawk in power, prospects for peace in Israel-Palestine look further away then ever. It is easy when faced with such news to fall into despair. To believe the vision of a just society for both Palestinians and Israeli citizens is impossible. Sometimes, it is feels easier to admit defeat.
When I’m feeling in this frame of mind, I’m always grateful for…
Narayan Desai Photo: Yann Forget
Milan Rai writes:
I met Narayan Desai, the Indian pacifist regarded by many as the last living link to Mohandas K Gandhi, at the War Resisters’ International Triennial in India in 2010 (PN 2518). That gathering was held at Gujarat University (Gujarat Vidyapith) in Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat in India; Narayan was chancellor of the university from 2007 until late last year. Narayan led us all in a huge swirling dance to close…
Geoffrey Carnall
Geoffrey Carnall began reading Peace News as a teenager in 1939. When mainstream distributors refused to handle PN during the Second World War, he cycled round Cambridge delivering bundles of the paper. He was still delivering PN to the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre until a few weeks before his death. He served on the PN board during Hugh Brock’s editorship, and his numerous letters and articles have added historical perspective and considered…
I will probably start ranting about This Changes Everything [conference] where in the workshop lots and lots of men had spoken and the facilitator said we have only time for one question and a man and a woman both put their hands up and the facilitator chose the man and I objected very strongly and said I wanted to hear what the woman had to say.
It made me think that we are talking about issues of inequality when we aren’t addressing it in our movements. But maybe that is self-…
